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Book: Introduction to Bertolt Brecht Author: Brecht, Bertolt Critic: Kenney, William Affiliation: Assistant Professor Of English, Manhattan College

Preface Few figures in the modern theatre have aroused as much interest and discussion as the German playwright Bertolt Brecht. Brecht's influence, both as an artist and as theoretician, continues to be felt throughout the world. This study guide is undertaken with the hope of aiding the reader in the study of some of Brecht's major works and of suggesting the nature of Brecht's importance for the modern theater and for modern literature and thought in general. The guide is divided into five major parts. The first, introductory section includes a brief summary of the major events of Brecht's life and a discussion of his theories of the theater. Brecht's theories have received such widespread attention that many readers who are all but totally unfamiliar with his plays can speak knowledgeably of his theories. This is an unhealthy situation and one that Brecht would deplore. While some knowledge of Brecht's is desirable, it is secondary to an understanding and appreciation of his plays. It is especially unwise, and false to Brecht's theory intentions, to read the plays as mere illustrations of the theories. In fact, the reader is advised not to concern himself with Brecht's theory until he has read, and read thoroughly, at least some of the major plays. Our most profound attention must be reserved, not for Brecht the theoretician, but for Brecht the playwright.

Introduction

The Life And Career Of Bertolt Brecht: Many of the changes that have helped to shape the modern world and the issues that have divided it are reflected in the eventful life of Bertolt Brecht. Born in the united Germany of Bismarck's Reich, he died in the divided Germany of the Cold War. The offspring of bourgeois parents, he allied himself with the revolutionary forces of his age and spent his last years in Communist East Berlin. To this day, the nature of Brecht's allegiance to communism remains a matter of speculation. That he turned his back on the West is clear; but whether he had any real hope in the East is uncertain. At any rate, Brecht's ambiguous relationship to the central political issues of his time - and ours - is one source of his continuing fascination for us.

Early Life: Born February 10, 1898, in Augsburg, Germany, Brecht was christened Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht. Brecht always disliked this elongated name, and as a young man took to calling himself Bertolt - or Bert-Brecht, which he seems to have considered simpler, less pretentious, and stronger than the name his parents had chosen for him. Brecht was born into a period of great change in Germany, which was embarked on the path of industrialization that has been the basis of its power in the present century. Yet Augsburg in 1898 was still a quiet city, and Brecht's parents were prosperous members of its respectable middle class. His father was the managing director of a local paper mill, and his mother was the daughter of a civil servant. Brecht was baptized in the Protestant faith of his mother, although his father was Catholic. Brecht's education was conventional enough. He attended a public elementary school from 1904 to 1908, and from 1908 to 1917, he was a student at the Realgymnasium (academic high school) in Augsburg. In 1917 he entered the University of Munich as a medical student, but he was called up for military service the following year. In the army, Brecht served as a medical orderly. His military experiences seem to have had a great effect on him. His firsthand look at the horrors of war reinforced the pacifistic views he had already been forming as a student, and pacifism was to remain an important element of his thought for the rest of his life. The Germany to which Brecht returned after the war was a defeated, disturbed, and disordered land, and there is no reason to suspect that the attractions of communism first suggested themselves to Brecht at this time. Communism enjoyed a brief period of dominance in Bavaria following the Russian Revolution in 1918, and Brecht found himself a member of the Augsburg Revolutionary Committee. In spite of the sympathy with communism this suggests, Brecht was by no means firmly committed to communism at this time.

Early Dramatic Works: In 1920 Brecht, who had already written his first play, Baal, arrived in Munich. Two years later his play Trommeln in der Nacht (Drums in the Night) was produced there, and led to Brecht's receiving the Kleist Prize, an award given annually to the best young dramatic talent, in 1922. In the same year Brecht married Marianne Zoff; this marriage ended in divorce five years later. In the course of the 1920s, Brecht gained wide experience in the various aspects of the theater. He held the post of "Dramaturg" (a mixture of dramatic adviser, editor, and public-relations man) in the Munich Kammerspiele theater in 1920, and later worked with Max Reinhardt and Erwin Piscator, two of the great German producers of the period. The work of Piscator in particular influenced Brecht's developing theories of the theater. Meanwhile Brecht continued to write. Among his more important plays of the 1920s are In the Swamp (1923) and A Man's a Man (1926). In 1928 Brecht collaborated with the composer Kurt Weill in In The Threepenny Opera, which proved to be his greatest popular success. There is considerable irony in the fact that his work was much enjoyed by Germany's middle class, who, failing to understand Brecht's dark comedy, were not aware that their values were under attack. By 1930 Brecht had apparently moved from the nihilism implied by plays like In the Swamp to a commitment to communism. This commitment received dramatic expression in one of Brecht's most powerful and disturbing plays, The Measures Taken, which was completed in 1930. Also completed in this year were The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, again in collaboration with Weill, and St. Joan of the Stockyards. In the same year Brecht was working on an adaptation of Mother, a novel by the Russian writer Maxim Gorky.

Exile: By this time the Nazi threat was becoming increasingly clear, and when Hitler gained power in 1933, Brecht decided it was time to leave Germany. He and his family (he had married the actress Helene Weigel in 1928) emigrated to Scandinavia, settling in Denmark until the summer of 1939. In view of Brecht's Communist beliefs, some writers have wondered why Brecht chose exile in Denmark rather than in the Soviet Union, and have suggested that perhaps Brecht's intellectual commitment to communism did not blind him to communism's many shortcomings in practice - at least as it was practiced in Stalin's Russia.

Brecht In The United States: By 1939 Hitler's shadow was spreading across Europe, and Brecht decided to leave Denmark. He lived for a while in Stockholm, Sweden, and then in Finland. Finally, in July, 1940, he entered the United States. Again, his choice of a home in exile is interesting. To get from Finland to San Francisco, Brecht had to travel across Russia. We are bound to wonder why this supposedly committed Communist was unwilling to remain in the Communist's "paradise." Perhaps, in spite of his commitment, Brecht was unwilling at this time to accept the limits on artistic freedom that he could expect in Stalin's totalitarian state. The 1930s were productive years for Brecht. His adaptation of Gorky's Mother was completed and produced, but public performances of it were banned in Germany in 1932. In 1938 he completed his anti-Nazi play The Private Life of the Master Race. The year 1939 marks the beginning of Brecht's richest creative period. In this year he completed two of his greatest works, the first version of Galileo (a second version, for American production, was completed in 1947) and Mother Courage. A third major work, The Good Woman of Setzuan, was completed in 1941. Brecht completed his fourth unquestioned masterpiece, The Caucasion Chalk Circle, in 1945. In addition to these major works, Brecht produced several other dramatic pieces in the early 1940s. The most controversial of these is probably The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, an attempt to portray the career of Adolf Hitler by an analogy to Chicago gangsterism. The word "resistible" (aufhaltsame) is of special significance, for Brecht rejected the so-called tragic vision which sees the kind of evil represented by Hitler as inevitable. It need not have happened, Brecht cries out. Man, he insists, can make a better world if he seriously chooses to do so. While in the United States, Brecht supported himself financially by working on a number of film scripts for Hollywood studios. On the whole, Brecht felt that his work was distorted in the films to which he contributed. The most distinguished film to which he devoted his talents is probably Hangman Also Die, set in Czechoslovakia during the German occupation of that country. The film was brilliantly directed by Brecht's great compatriot and fellow exile, Fritz Lang; but again, Brecht was dissatisfied with what was done to his script in the final version of the film. In 1947 Brecht's Galileo received its first American production, which was not a popular success, but it seems to have been an artistic one. The production was directed by Joseph Losey, who has since earned an international reputation as a film director, and featured Charles Laughton, who was also primarily responsible for the English adaptation, in the title role. Brecht's political opinions led in 1947 to an appearance before the House Un-American Activities Committee. In parrying the Committee's questions, Brecht played a role not unlike that he assigned to Galileo in his play. At any rate, the committed Communist seemed to fool the professional Communist-hunters. "He is doing all right," said the Committee chairman. "You are a good example," he told Brecht. The following year Brecht moved to East Berlin.

The Last Years: While in Berlin Brecht completed his Little Organon for the Theatre, the fullest statement of his dramatic theories. He was also active in the Berliner Ensemble, a theatrical group, staging productions of his own plays and of those of others. If Brecht had any criticisms to make of the more restrictive features of East Germany's Communist government, he never made them in public. In fact, he became prized by the Communists as an example of the "superiority" of Communist culture. He was awarded the East German National Prize in 1951 and the Stalin Peace Prize in 1954. But in spite of the position of honor he held, Brecht on several occasions had difficulties with East German censorship. Brecht's last years brought with them much that might have brought him satisfaction. The importance of his work was coming to be recognized all over the world. He had the opportunity to work with a brilliant company of actors. Yet he also suffered the frustrations of the creative artist in an authoritarian society. We may never know with any assurance whether Brecht was satisfied that these frustrations were justified by the Communist ideal. Bertolt Brecht died of coronary thrombosis in August, 1956. He left behind a mass of manuscripts, including diaries. What he may have confided to these diaries, and whether the government of East Germany will ever permit them to be published, remain matters of doubt.

The Theater Of Brecht

Brecht's Theory Of Theater: In any discussion of Brecht's theory, it is important at all times to remember that he was always a practical man of the theatre, rather than an academic always aesthetician. His practical bias reveals itself in his willingness to modify his theory in the light of experience and to ignore theory entirely when it seemed irrelevant to the practical problems of an individual production. It must be kept in mind, then, that the theory discussed below grew out of many years of practical experience in the theater. A summary of Brecht's key ideas, which is all that can be attempted here, does not do justice to the flexibility characteristic of Brecht's mind. Brecht's ideas developed and changed in the course of his life and would certainly have continued to do so if he had lived longer. Furthermore, Brecht's theory did not develop in a vacuum. A full understanding of Brecht's theory would require something that this guide cannot do, namely, an understanding of the German theater against which Brecht reacted in his theory and practice. Finally, the reader is reminded once again that the relation between Brecht's theory and practice is uncertain and ambiguous. The plays are not written merely to illustrate the theory, and the theory can only partially explain what happens in the plays. Still, some knowledge of Brecht's theory will probably prove useful in understanding what might otherwise seem strange in the plays.

The Theater Of Illusion: If Brecht's plays do seem strange to us, it is perhaps because we are accustomed to the conventions of the "theater of illusion." The basic convention of this theater is that what we are watching on the stage is life itself. It is as though we look into a room, the fourth wall of which has magically been rendered invisible. No device which may shatter this illusion, such as a direct address to the audience, is permitted. Sets, lighting, make-up, and acting are all designed to intensify this illusion. Accustomed as we have become to the theater of illusion, we sometimes make the mistake of concluding that it is the only way of true theater. Yet the theater of illusion has played only a small part in the history of the theater as a whole. The theater of Shakespeare, for example, with its blank verse, its soliloquies, and its simplified staging has little to do with the theater of illusion.

Anti-Illusionist Theater: Many modern playwrights have recognized the limitations of the theater of illusion and have presented alternatives to it. In the American theater, Eugene O'Neill's Strange Interlude, Thornton Wilder's Our Town, Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie, and Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman are but a few of the many important plays that in some degree reject illusionist conventions. European rebels against illusionism include such significant figures as Luigi Pirandello in Italy, Erwin Piscator (with whom Brecht worked) in Germany, and, more recently, Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, and Jean Genet in France. Brecht was not alone, then, in rejecting the conventions of the theater of illusion. We shall now examine some of the specific terms of Brecht's rebellion.

Structure: According to Brecht, the traditional dramatic form is based on artificial and unnecessary restrictions. The play deals with a single action, is limited in the range of time and space it covers, and each scene is important only for what it contributes to the whole. As an alternative (and the ability to see alternatives is of central importance in Brecht's thought) Brecht suggests an "epic" structure - that is, a structure based on the epic, a looser, narrative form, which is of its nature episodic and in which each episode is significant, not only for what it contributes to the whole, but in itself. The epic differs further from the dramatic form in that, as narrative, it deals with past events (expressed in the past tense), rather than with the imaginary "present" of the drama, which unfolds before us as if it were happening for the first time. In his "epic" theater, Brecht wants the audience to see the action as something that has happened in the past, in a particular time and place, and that is now being re-enacted. Again, the audience is not permitted the illusion that what is on the stage is life in the process of being lived.

Staging: The "epic" structure in itself is only one part of Brecht's theory. The implications of the structure must be realized in the staging. Brecht was less interested than many of his contemporaries in changing the shape of the stage, or the physical relationship of stage to auditorium (as in arena theater, where a circular stage is placed in the center of the auditorium). What he wanted to change was the relationship between the audience and what happens on the stage. The audience must not be hypnotized into accepting the theatre as "real." Since part of the hypnotic effect of the contemporary theater is derived from the darkened state of the auditorium, Brecht often argued that the lights in the auditorium should remain lit. In this way, the audience would remain fully conscious, intellectually alert, as he wished them to be. They would be better able to judge what goes on on the stage, rather than merely accepting it passively as so often occurs. Brecht also insisted that the devices used on stage should not be aimed at fooling the audience into forgetting that they are in a theater. If a scene is set at night, simply hang up an artificial moon to indicate that it is night, rather than using artificial lighting to create the illusion that it really is night. Let the stage always be bathed in brilliant light, so that the audience may see clearly all that is happening. In his early writing, Brecht even insisted that the sources of light themselves should be placed in clear view of the audience, but he later modified this idea when experience taught him that it resulted in undesirable distraction. A similar anti-illusionist intention is revealed in Brecht's attitude toward other elements of stage productions. The kind of set which attempts to reproduce in complete illusionist detail a real place was repugnant to him. He preferred a simplified stage that did not pretend to be anything but a stage. The contrast between this simplified stage and the reality of particular objects, such as the wagon of Mother Courage, was an important part of Brecht's theater. It encouraged the audience to see the significance of the important objects, rather than passively contemplating a pseudo-reality. Brecht's attitude towards such details as costuming and make-up is consistent with this basic position.

Acting: In Brecht's theater, as in all theater, the actor is of supreme importance. What is unusual in Brecht's theater is that Brecht argues against the actor's becoming the character he plays. It is the actor's job to "demonstrate" the character. In an important passage Brecht clarifies this idea by comparing the actor to an onlooker who is describing an accident he has witnessed. Occasionally, the onlooker finds it necessary to "act" - to show us what the people involved in the accident - say, the pedestrian struck by an automobile - did. We do not confuse the onlooker with the pedestrian. While remaining clearly himself, the onlooker demonstrates what the pedestrian did. He acts out, or demonstrates, the pedestrian's walk, his failure to look both ways before stepping off the curb, and so on. So should the actor, while remaining clearly himself, demonstrate what the character did. Thus Peter Lorre, in the original production of Mann Ist Mann, remained Peter Lorre while demonstrating the behavior of Galy Gay. The traditional way of praising an actor - "He's not playing Lear, he is Lear" - has no place in Brecht's scale of theatrical values.

Alienation: One of the most widely discussed elements of Brecht's theory is his concept of alienation, a concept implicit in almost all the other elements of the theory. In the original German Brecht's word for his concept is verfremdung, sometimes translated as "estrangement." It refers essentially to a process of forcing the audience to see things in a new light, to "alienate" or "estrange" the audience from what has become familiar to it. The idea of alienation is by no means completely original with Brecht. The English Romantic poet Shelley is one of many who have defined the poet's task as making us look upon familiar people, objects, and situations as if seeing them for the first time, when they were first strange to us. Brecht points out that one becomes in this sense "alienated" from one's mother when she remarries. One sees her then in a new light, as another man's wife, and it is almost as though one had never seen her before. The idea of "alienation," then, is not new in itself. What is new is the emphasis Brecht places on its social implications. When we have become completely accustomed to anything, it is an easy matter to assume that it has always been so, that it will always be so. That is, we accept the inevitability of what we are used to. But when something new is offered to us, we recognize that it is not inevitable, that we may accept or reject it. Now, when we are "alienated" from something that is familiar, it is as though that something were new. It looks strange to us, and we are forced to recognize that a thing so new and strange is not inevitable, and therefore that it could be otherwise. For Brecht, this applies as well to social, political, and economic systems as to anything else. The artist who "alienates" capitalism, for instance, invites the audience to see that there are alternatives to capitalism, that it need not be taken for granted; it could be otherwise. As Brecht sees it, the demonstration by "alienation" that society can be changed must lead the audience to change it along Communist lines. This conclusion does not, however, follow logically from anything else in Brecht's theory and will not seem convincing to the non-Communist reader.

Relation Between Alienation And Other Concepts: It should be clear by now that Brecht's notions of structure, staging, and acting are all related to the concept of alienation. It is essentially by means of structure, staging, and acting that alienation is effected; it is for the purpose of alienation that Brechtian structure, staging, and acting are what they are.

End: In his early theoretical writings, Brecht insisted on a didactic end for theater; theater should teach the audience that a better world is both necessary and possible. Later, he modified his position and argued that the proper end of theater, as of all art, is delight. Yet the delight proper to our scientific age is not the sort of delight one takes in eating candy, but the more profound delight that comes from discovering new truths about oneself and the world one lives in. In pleading the cause of delight, then, Brecht did not discard his earlier didacticism. Rather, he succeeded in reconciling the demands of teaching and of pleasing.

Audience: The theater of illusion demands of the audience a nonintellectual, emotional response based primarily on empathy, the tendency to put onself in the place of characters on the stage, to feel what they feel. Brecht's theater, while not ruling out emotion, demands a more critical and intellectual response. The audience should not indulge in empathy, but exercise critical judgment toward what it sees on the stage.

Additional Terms: A few of Brecht's other terms may require some clarification:

Gestus: A key word in Brecht's dramatic theory is Gestus. It is, unfortunately, a word for which there is no exact English equivalent. As Brecht uses the word, it seems to cover the entire range of external expressions of social relationships. A Gestus, then, is a revelation of a relationship by a deed, word, and look.

Aristotelian And Non-Aristotelian: These terms should present no great difficulty. Rightly or wrongly, Brecht associated the theater of illusion with Aristotle, the Greek philosopher whose Poetics is the most influential critical study of drama ever written. Hence, he often refers to this theater as "Aristotelian" and to his own, anti-illusionist theater as "non-Aristotelian."

Critique: Brecht's theories should by no means be accepted uncritically. He himself was constantly revising them throughout his career, and it would be ironic indeed if theories that ask the audience to remain at all times critically alert were to be passively accepted. We have already noted that the Communist implications of Brecht's theory derive rather from Brecht's political faith than from the logic of the theory. We might add that Brecht oversimplifies the nature of the "theater of illusion." Even in that theater, the illusion is never so complete as Brecht suggests. The audience never entirely forgets that it is in a theater, and is never completely convinced that what is on the stage is life itself. Finally, Brecht overstates the case for his own kind of theater when he insists, as he too often does in his early writing, that it is the only kind of theater that is right for our time. Still, in making us see the illusionist conventions in a new light, Brecht, like a true Brechtian, reminds us that these conventions are not inevitable, that they can be modified or even abandoned. This critical "alienation" is perhaps the greatest contribution of Brecht the theoretician.